Recordings for Someone

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We hear a tape that a man named David Cossin made for a woman in Italy, who he'd met during a week he spent there. In the tape, he tries to convince her to visit him in New York. Host Ira Glass explains that hearing this tape—made by one person, for one other—is different than other things you hear on the radio. There's something unusually emotional and direct about it. Most radio stories are for an audience of many. This week, an audience of many listens in on tapes intended for an audience of one. (2 minutes)

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Producer Jonathan Goldstein with a story about friendship, mothers and sons, and what some have called the greatest phone message in the world—it circulated at Columbia University in New York City, and had something to do with the Little Mermaid. (19 minutes)

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Kevin Murphy is a college student in Idaho who stutters. Using the power of radio editing, he and the production staff of This American Life removed his pauses, stutters and repeats so that he could record a message in which he doesn't stutter at all. This allowed him to tape a message about something that's been bothering him, to send to one man...a pizza guy, in Idaho. Visit the National Stuttering Association website. (6 minutes)

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During the Persian Gulf War, John Brasfield was an army scout. He went on dangerous missions, in which he was exposed to enemy fire with little protection. On most missions, he took along a cassette recorder and taped the action for his wife. He did it so that if something did happen to him, she'd at least know what happened, and he might get a chance to say goodbye. And then, on February 27, 1991, he accidentally recorded an incident that haunted him for years...an incident in which Iraqi soldiers may have been unnecessarily killed. (18 minutes)

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We hear more of David Cossin's tapes. He made over a dozen for the woman in Italy. And we hear from the woman — Allesandra Pomarico—about whether they worked, and what she thought of them. (10 minutes)

Allen Wigington, former Chief Deputy at the Pickens County Sheriff's department, now magistrate judge, tells the story a soldier killed in Iraq—Specialist David Collins—arriving back home in Georgia to be buried.